When you’ve spent weeks exploring the stunning landscapes, cities, and small towns of New Zealand, it’s natural to start thinking about what souvenirs to bring back home.
We’ve never been big fans of the typical souvenirs you find in tourist shops because, honestly, who needs another t-shirt, paperweight, or random shot glass from a place they’ve never been?
Instead, we prefer to look for unique New Zealand food souvenirs that truly give people a taste of the country. Kiwi snacks, local treats, and specialty food gifts feel much more personal, and they’re also a delicious way to share a small piece of your trip with everyone back home.
After traveling around New Zealand, these are the tasty souvenirs that made it into our bags, along with a few extra Kiwi favorites you might want to make room for too. We understand that not all of these originate exclusively from New Zealand, but for travelers like us from Canada, we found them to be impressively unique enough to bring back.
What You’ll Get Out Of This Article
- The best New Zealand food souvenirs to bring home, from Whittaker’s Chocolate to Mānuka honey
- Which classic Kiwi snacks are worth looking for in supermarkets
- Extra New Zealand treats, pantry staples, and foodie gifts to add to your shopping list
- Where to buy New Zealand souvenirs for better prices before heading to the airport
- Practical tips for packing food souvenirs and getting them home safely
The Best New Zealand Food Souvenirs To Bring Home
When it comes to food souvenirs, these were our favorites that we learned about as we traveled throughout New Zealand. So, without further ado, here are our 5 favorite food souvenirs from New Zealand.
TOP TIPS FOR TRAVELING TO NEW ZEALAND
Planning A Trip To New Zealand?
Before you start shopping for souvenirs, make sure you’ve got your trip planned. Check out The Comprehensive New Zealand Travel Guide for everything you need to know about visiting New Zealand, from when to go and getting around to budgeting and must-know travel tips.
The Comprehensive New Zealand Travel Guide – Read Before You Go
#1 Whittaker’s Chocolate
Oh man, how do we even start? Whittaker’s Chocolate is the premier chocolate brand that’s been around since 1896 in New Zealand. They’re a local favorite for good reason because of their emphasis on using high-quality cocoa beans, highly controlled processes, and obsession in keeping the cocoa butter and mass together.
Besides there being an overwhelming number of flavors, combinations, and classes, they also have different packaging sizes, so you’ll no doubt be scratching your head a bit when you first encounter Whittaker’s.
Our recommendation? Eat lots of chocolate while traveling! Use your time in New Zealand to try all different kinds of bars that speak to you so you can narrow down your favorite. What can help is if you start with the Minimix bag.
To narrow down your choices, we’ve compiled our favorites.
Hokey Pokey
This is basically crunchy chunks of sponge candy. If you’re not familiar with sponge candy, it’s the addictive stuff we found in Buffalo’s Watson’s, or they’re found in a Canadian/British bar called Crunchie.
Essentially you got these small chunks swirled into milk chocolate, and it’s such a perfect combination of smooth decadence with spongy crunch delight.
Hokey Pokey itself is a Kiwi-specific term for sponge candy that you can find all over the place, whether it’s in gelato, ice cream, or other desserts.
Tweats
The packaging for this feature small birds hatching out of their shells, which doesn’t really tell you too much, but essentially, it’s creamy milk chocolate with popping candy inside.
Remember Pop Rocks? Yep, they’ve stirred those right into the chocolate to bring back good memories of our childhood and a twist to eating chocolate.
L&P
Wow, was this one a mission to find! A good friend of ours kept raving about Whittaker’s and their L&P chocolate. First of all, we had no clue what L&P was before going to New Zealand, so that didn’t help.
The first 2+ weeks in New Zealand, we went to every single possible convenient store and grocery store to look for the elusive L&P. It wasn’t until we got to Taupo that we made a giant breakthrough and found a bag of these in the mini-slab format.
We were skeptical whether this would be as incredible as she made it out to be.
Oh, it was!
The crazy thing is that the product doesn’t even exist on the Whittaker’s product page because it was a special collaboration with the drink, L&P (more on that below), years ago but is secretly still in production if you know where to look.
This mash-up is this wild mix of white chocolate with a lemon twist, topped with popping rocks to simulate the insane fizz you get from drinking L&P. It’s absolutely brilliant!
This is our pick for top souvenir to bring back home just because it’s so New Zealand and really something you can’t find sold anywhere else.
We bought artisan blocks, regular blocks, slabs, chunks, and mini-slabs and ultimately, we think mini-slabs are the way to go for gifting because it allows you to mix and match if you want to. They’re small and bite-sized, and you can pack them easily by opening the bag and stuffing them into whatever crevice of space is still available in your suitcase or backpack.
If you’ve forgotten some or are just craving for more Whittaker’s, you can always cheat and grab them off of Amazon.
#2 Manuka Honey
Internationally, this is what New Zealand has really become known for. Manuka honey is a special type of honey that’s primarily found here that comes from bees pollinating a native bush called manuka.
The hype around manuka honey is in its natural antibacterial qualities. Without getting all science-ey here, there is a massively high concentration of the antibacterial component in the nectar of manuka flowers.
This is why manuka honey is much more expensive than regular honey.
What Is Manuka Said To Treat?
- Improve oral health
- Soothe sore throat
- Prevent gastric ulcers
- Promote aid healing
- Treat acne
- Treat symptoms of cystic fibrosis
- Improve digestive symptoms like IBS
Now It Gets Science-ey
Now not all manuka honey is equal because of the concentration of that antibacterial compound. That’s why there are rating systems such as UMF (Unique Manuka Factor). To be considered potent enough to be therapeutic, manuka honey needs to be a minimum of UMF 10. The number goes higher and higher, and that just means more of that active ingredient.
This gets a bit more complicated when there are competing grading systems. MGO is another and stands for the active ingredient that we’ve been speaking of (methylglyoxal). 10UMF is equivalent to 263 MGO. In Manuka that uses MGO, you’re usually looking for around 300 MGO.
So What Should You Get?
This is probably what you care about. The truth is that unless you’re looking to treat something serious and you’re truly using it for medicinal purposes, all you need is UMF 10+ because most likely you’re going to be stirring it into hot water or with tea since you’ll still be using regular honey back at home for regular honey things.
Small bottles make great gifts, and no need to go overboard with high UMF/MGO unless you’re buying it for someone that really knows about manuka.
Building Your New Zealand Itinerary?
Wondering where all these incredible foods and local specialties fit into your trip? Follow our Ultimate 3 Week New Zealand Itinerary to see the country’s top highlights, scenic drives, and unforgettable experiences.
The Ultimate 3 Week New Zealand Itinerary
#3 Special Edition Tim Tams
We know, Tim Tams are Australian! But if you’re going to be in this part of the world, we say why not, take advantage!
These days, you can find Tim Tams in your local grocery store because Arnott’s has started to really push them out, and the demand for them is there because they really are addictive.
Instead of the regular flavors out there (original, dark chocolate, chewy caramel), look out for the special ones that never make it out of the Asia Pacific region.
This year, we discovered the latest collaboration between Tim Tams and a gelato shop called Gelato Messina, which we went to in our 2 days in Sydney.
The two that we really loved were the Honeycomb (Hokey Pokey!) and Iced Coffee flavors. There’s also a Turkish Delight version that we didn’t try.
What is unique about these Tim Tams is that they’re meant to be chilled in the fridge. The “Chill Me!” part of the packaging actually changes color when cold. Now do you have to have these chilled? Probably not as we feel like it’s a bit of a gimmick, but it does get you wondering what Tim Tams are like when cold, and it does give them a nice extra crunch.
#4 L&P
L&P stands for Lemon & Paeroa and speaks to the history of how it was invented. Created in 1097, lemon juice was combined with carbonated mineral water from the town of Paeroa, and voila, L&P was born.
We’d say as a drink; this is very much a like-it-or-hate-it kind of thing. It’s similar to Sprite or 7-Up except with what feels like double the amount of carbonation.
While we were in New Zealand, it was super refreshing to have, especially after a hot day out at Cathedral Cove, but we personally found it too bubbly.
Also, if you plan on bringing a few of these home, we would avoid packing these in your suitcase in case they leak/blow up. Pack them with you on your carry-on where the cabin is pressurized, and you should be okay. You can even go the extra step and put it in a bag in case.
#5 Creamed Manuka
Okay, maybe we’re just totally late to the creamed honey game, but this was a new discovery from our trip to New Zealand after Jean
